Me here and him there - our choice
by lycoris-flower
Summary: Spoiler episode 26 (end) - Hitomi explains to Yukari the reasons and implications of his last departure of Gaea and her return to Earth. There was her life here, yes, but there was also much more than that. Translation of the french version "Moi ici et lui là-bas - notre choix".


**Nom :** Me here and him there – our choice.  
**Fandom :** Escaflowne  
**Disclaimer :** Escaflowne and its characters belong to Sunrise.  
**Genre :** Introspection  
**Rating :** G  
**Characters:** Hitomi, Yukari – mention of Van.  
**Plot :** Hitomi explains to Yukari the reasons and implications of his last departure of Gaea and her return to Earth. There was her life here, yes, but there was also much more than that.  
**Redaction :** 2013.06.21  
**Chapter :** One-shot

**I**t was a long time since I saw on your face that some questions plagued your mind. That my lost gazes and my silent smiles, in the middle of my half answers and my tight indices, were just given birth to a multitude of new ones. You moderate your curiosity and, absorbed in this puzzle game you began to understand, you took the time. To find the right questions to ask and the right words to make them. To also guess the perfect time for me to submit them. So you come to me now, though fearful determined, and ask me: "Hitomi, why did you come back?"  
The sad little smile that did not rise to my eyes said to you: because it was necessary. For him, for me - for us. For Gaia. My voice adds: because the power of Atlantis is both too strong and too weak. Because we were, too – perhaps we still are, but we have enough confidence to make everything okay. And because all of that went together, two by two, hand in hand.  
Your brows and your air concerned though anxious (What, that's _all_? I don't understand _anything_ about what tell me, really) tear me a chuckle. Ah, yes, my poor Yukari. My faithful Yukari, which gives credit to my dreams. Let me explain ...

**G**aea is an end and a beginning, it is both result and crucible of new experiences. It is a work of infinite complexity, the patient work of thousands of lives along equally countless years. Since the imagination of men is limitless and that Gaia is the result of their dreams, then in this world nothing is impossible. This alchemy is delicate, because it contains in itself all the possibilities, all these agreements of opposites and these discordant unity: it is a chaos that generates its own new potential fluctuations. Changing yet unchanged, mercurial.  
The power of dreams. The strength of feelings. These are the red strings of our lives, which, entangled, embroider and weave promises the living fabric of fate. The one with the other, the one inside the other. Linked, inextricably – like our lives, Van and me. And in all these manipulations, in all these contrary movements, these two forces were crystallized and so rested in our hands. Being in symbiosis him and me, we had entered into resonance with the very material in the world.

An innocent desire that escapes us, nonchalantly. A wish expressed in a sigh, without even thinking about it. And everything can change. Everything. For better, yes, but also for the worse. That in itself is a heady thought, a temptation to which it may be difficult to resist. It is, in fact, a possibility too dangerous for us to take the risk to give it shape. Because we are only human; full of contradictions, at this point subject to our desires, our desires and love hungry what we lack ... What price to pay then? What price of blood and tears add to what had already flow?  
Together, we can change everything. From time to space. From time to fate - and their constant movement, that slow slide which is called eternity. Escaflowne and the pendant were just catalysts, amplifiers. Just mirrors where we could cross our own gaze, just reflections of what we were and what we could. And it was just ... too heavy. With too severe consequences. With too huge implications to not affect us one way or another, him like me. Me and him. Both of us, all of us. We would never have forgiven us.  
How to not always be afraid of echoes our words, our actions? Fear of these ricochets the simmering surface of the lake in the world, theses circles which extend, again and again, ever further, ever larger. Like many echoes and emotions which collide, which thus extend endlessly, a bit closer to the dissolution with each new wave.  
We had already see what was happening when we allow ourselves to go to all this.  
Especially me, yes.  
Especially me.

This potential was an additional burden. Something I did not want to see weigh on Van weary shoulders. He is brave, but he is also, paradoxically, very fragile.  
He was already the last descendant of the people of Atlantis. The Dragon, Escaflowne's driver. The ultimate king of Fanelia - Fanelia which was waiting, calling, which clamored for the return of its hero. A king who had a whole people to support and an entire kingdom to rebuilt. And the latter role, this alone, was not it enough for him?  
And I ... I ... The Girl from the Moon Illusion. An ordinary girl, in reality; neither instrument of power or goddess, and certainly not something that we can compete on. And yet, the eternal element of uncertainty. Volatile and fluctuating, unbound. Not quite here nor there really. Just elsewhere. Divided and foreign. Prey to my needs and my doubts. On an unstable equilibrium on the thread of my own life.  
How could I tell me? How could have remained so?

**G**aea, like the Pythie, has just too turned to a crazy pace. Its insane waltz left me there, confused, distraught and dizzy, as the edge of a precipice.  
I needed to stop for a moment to catch my breath and calm the beating of my heart upset. To find my points of reference and to see beyond things, or see them for what they really are: not with the mind's eye this time, but with the eyes of the heart. With the heart in my eyes.  
I was given time to contemplate my own perspectives and the choice offered to me. To test my balance on the threshold between two worlds, between two possible lives, and to find my answer, my truth. And accept all the consequences. Without trying to escape or divert them. Remembering who I was and what I really wanted. Without excuse and without false modesty.  
I've made my decision: I left. I flew again to the stars, under another sky, in a world of strange familiarity. But in full knowledge of the cause this time, knowing what I left behind me. Knowing, yes, all that I lost, and the price to pay. And don't doubt that I was bleeding to this separation, that the wound is still strong and deep bite.

Despite that, in spite of myself, I had to leave. To resist the temptation of the fusion and do not melt into our link. Do not give up my individuality to stun me in this other unity. Losing him to find myself, and lose myself in myself.  
He was willing, you know? To leave everything, to leave behind him a kingdom for which he had fought, to give up everything he had just found. Van, being who he is, would never ask for what he would have been unable to offer himself. However, he guessed that the problem, as the solution, was not there. This is why, of all possible things, he left me free. Free to my choice, free to leave. Free to leave without him, free to be alone. He did not try to hold me, to force me, to imprison me – neither by his hand or his voice. He understood. He accepted. He _knew_.  
So I went back to Earth, leaving us both with this cruel wound to the heart, separated yet not disunited. This is why even now ... Even now, he is still here without being really there. He followed me on the strange paths to which I exiled. Accompanying me with his widespread, subtle presence. Evanescent, like a scent in the spring wind, like a shadow in my shadow. Without imposing anything, ever. A thousand times, he could lose patience and be annoyed by my whims, or yield to his owns. A thousand times, he could have invoke me, calling me back to his side: the pendant against his skin, against his heart, is a burning reminder of this alternative. Another temptation, another ordeal, constantly. But he loves me. He loves me enough to respect that choice. Our choice.

Me here and him there. One without the other and yet one with the other.  
It is an act of love and faith absurd, antinomic. It is the abandonment and loyalty in a single gesture. To be able to give everything and lose everything in the same time, or lose everything because we give everything, precisely. And yet gain way more: true freedom. We freed ourselves of our destiny to, perhaps, to return again. To return again to each other. Unhindered. Washed of everything, even ourselves. And then finally to be able to love each other in the only way possible. In a simple and sincere way, an authentic maner.  
Me here and him there. One without the other and yet one with the other.

* * *

**Notes :** Like many fans, the end of Escaflowne affected me and took me aback in many ways and on many levels. I was full of frustration which only makes more obsessive the things and the issues that were related to them, twisting and turning in a corner of my mind as the years passed by; a necessary time for me to come to accept this conclusion and consider it as the best there could be. Because if it had been different, the impact and emotions would have absolutely not been the same and I have learned to cherish this injury. Here are the answers I've found so far to this "why? ".  
This story, even though it was supposed to end on a happier note and the reunion of our two lovebirds (Hitomi, at the base, told all this to Mirana and not Yukari – so on Gaea and not on Earth), claimed its independence and moved away from my original plan. I arrived at a result in contradiction with my own predictions (nothing, after all, is predetermined and Destiny is not _written_) without the text has to suffer the change and it allowed me to include it in a logical way more faithful to the serie. Without giving in (me either) to my own desires, respecting the original spirit.


End file.
